A stitch in time ...

It could be concern for the environment, or simply the threat of recession, but sales of sewing machines are rocketing - and making your own clothes is the height of fashion. Eithne Farry offers a guide to getting started

Ever since I was a teenager, I've made most of my own clothes. Back then, I didn't have much money, so it was certainly a thrifty option - caught between sewing and nudism, I naturally plumped for the former. But what I really loved was the creative satisfaction of making something original. I quickly realised that there was no need to worry about lack of experience, or that those first outfits wouldn't be quite perfect. There was virtue in diving in. The first dress I made didn't have anything so technical as a zip, and if you looked closely, the hem was crooked, but every time I wore it I had a dizzy sense of accomplishment.

So it comes as no surprise to me that more and more people are taking up sewing. Last week, Argos reported that sales of selected sewing machines have rocketed by 50% in their stores in the past 12 months. Explaining this phenomenon, they cite increasing concern for the environment, awareness of social issues and a backlash against the "throwaway society". They need only add the words "credit crunch" to give a complete picture of why sewing has suddenly become popular again. Woolworths has also just reported a similar trend, with sewing-machine sales growing by 258% in the same period. Their explanation? "We think it's down to more home economics classes being taught in school, the increasing popularity of fancy-dress parties and the death of the high-street tailor."

And those figures show that a trend that has been bubbling under for a decade has finally hit the mainstream. The crafting revival began in earnest in 2000, when Debbie Stoller, editor of popular US feminist magazine Bust, took a fresh approach to the traditional skills of knitting and crochet, reinventing them for contemporary crafters. She wrote the knitting book, Stitch and Bitch, and soon groups of the same name were gathering in clubs, bars and cafes across the world to make stuff together. In the UK, other groups started, too, including Knitchiks (knitchicks.co.uk), the Cast Off knitting club (castoff.info) and IknitLondon (iknit.org.uk).

This creative revolution means that anyone new to sewing need not worry that they will be stuck making the nasty, old-fashioned items that used to be a mainstay of the pattern books, modelled by frighteningly clean-cut couples with immobile barnets. These days, there are plenty of cutting-edge books around, and the internet is a fantastic resource for those new to crafting.

Some crafters take their creativity to extremes, recycling more than just the odd stretch of corduroy or batch of wool. Rachael Matthews, for instance, who wrote the brilliant book Knitorama's 25 Great Things to Knit, recently held an "Analogue Amnesty Party", entreating friends to hand over their old VHS and analogue cassette tapes, so that the tape itself could be pulled out and all "those memories spun into new wool". Matthews runs the Prick Your Finger haberdashery shop in London's Bethnal Green with Louise Harries, who says that she is currently "crocheting a shaman's head mask in luminous pink" for a short film she's working on, and points out that making things "is better than buying because you get exactly what you want". Harries and Matthews are passionate about being thrifty; obsessively repairing clothes, instead of throwing them away. The shop stocks all the necessities for such make-do-and-mend endeavours, and offers darning tutorials "for heels, elbows and toes". Other sewing shops around the country offer similar services, but perhaps the easiest way to pick up hints is to go on to YouTube, where a huge wealth of online sewing tutorials has recently cropped up. Just type "How to sew on a button" or "How to darn a sock" into the search engine.

And as soon as you start making and mending, you realise that there is an upside to tightening your belt - rediscovering the lost joy of creative satisfaction. There's nothing to beat that pleased, proud feeling of making your own skirt, top or trousers. Just this afternoon I rustled up a dress from a piece of Ikea furnishing fabric printed with pretty birds. There's a bit of material left over, just enough for a small bag. That will have to wait until tomorrow.

Here are my 10 steps for getting started:

1 Don't fear the sewing machine

It is your friend. You can, of course, hand-sew stuff but it takes absolutely ages to finish any major project, so I wouldn't recommend it; with a sewing machine you can whip up a canvas tote in half an hour and complete a summer dress in a day. There's an intimidating amount of choice in the world of sewing machines, but don't be bedazzled by those models that offer 300 embroidery options. Trust me, however essential the decorative satin stitch and outline stretch stitch may seem when you're weighing up your options in the shop, you are almost certainly never going to use them. For years I relied on a trusty old machine, inherited from my sister, and used precisely three of the stitch choices - straight stitch to sew seams, zigzag to neaten the edges, and reverse stitch to stop the stitches from unravelling. That is all.

I bought a new model a few months ago, when the old one finally conked out and, with the same three stitch options, I have made five dresses, three bags and a surprisingly short skirt that I quickly converted into a cushion cover (don't panic when something goes wrong - it's the perfect opportunity to improvise).

My new model is a Janome Excel 2, bought from John Lewis - an excellent source of craft materials - for about £250. It's very straight-forward to use and will deal with heavy materials, such as furnishing fabrics and curtains, which is a huge bonus, and well worth bearing in mind when you're looking to buy. John Lewis provide a free one-hour tutorial once you've bought your machine, and give you the opportunity to try out the machine before you buy too, which is great. And tempting though it can be to plump for one of those small, hand-held sewing machines, I personally wouldn't bother. While they're often cheap and super-portable, they're also insubstantial and limit the fabrics you can work with.

2 You will also need a basic sewing kit

Thread, tape measure, tailor's chalk, dressmaking pins, a few hand-sewing needles. It is worth investing in a good pair of dress-making scissors; it's much easier to cut fabric with a sharp, clean edge. Add in a small pair of scissors for trimming seams and snipping threads. Left-handed? Right-handed? It's an obvious point, but make sure that you buy scissors that match up with your cutting hand. An iron with a steam function also works wonders; you'll be amazed at the difference a little judicious pressing can make. But my favourite thing of all is a quick un-picker: things can go haywire and this little gadget undoes a cranky seam or a crooked hem in seconds and only costs about £2.

3 Keep it simple

Don't be tempted by a Vogue advanced designer pattern for your first go at sewing. It will make you cry. Opt for something much easier.

A good starter project is a bit of customisation on a long-sleeved, striped T-shirt. Cut the sleeves short, and then cut out small circles from the snipped-off sleeves. Use the zigzag stitch on the edges of the circles to stop them fraying. Sew the circles to the front of your T-shirt, so that the stripes on your shirt go one way and the stripes on your circles go another.

Now you're ready to make a tote bag, which you can use to replace all those plastic ones that will otherwise end up bobbing along on the high seas. You'll need about half a metre of fabric, out of which you should then cut two rectangles of fabric, sew them together along three sides, and fix on two longer strips as handles. Use plain cotton material as a blank canvas and customise it: sew on buttons, create your own design with fabric paints, add sequins or ribbon rosettes.

4 Now try a dress or a skirt

Unpick an old A-line skirt and use it as a template, either pinning it straight to the fabric and cutting around it, or pinning it to some taped-together newspaper and making a reusable pattern that way (remember that if you're throwing the old skirt out afterwards, you can use its zip for your new skirt. In fact, it's always worth remembering that old clothes that are too tatty for the charity shop can be a great source of buttons, zips, sequins etc).

5 Next stop: an easy-to-sew paper pattern

Get one from one of the major commercial pattern companies - Burda, Vogue, New Look, McCalls and Simplicity all have easy-to-follow patterns with no tricky techniques to master. The level of difficulty is clearly labelled on each pattern. Don't be put off by the photographs or sketches on the packets, which quite often feature items of clothing that you would never, ever want to wear. The trick is to imagine them in the fabric of your choice. When you actually get the pattern out of the packet, again the message is "Fear not". They're printed on big sheets of flimsy tissue paper, and on first viewing there seem to be lots of black lines that make no sense whatsoever. Grab a fluorescent highlighter pen, and take a deep breath. Carefully flatten out the tissue paper, decide which size you are (most patterns are multi-size) and carefully highlight those lines. This makes it so much easier when you come to the cutting-out bit, because you can clearly see where the scissors should go.

6 Visit your local charity shop

It's best not to use material that costs a king's ransom at the start in case things go wrong. Charity shops can be a surprisingly good place to find interesting fabric; you just have to be canny with other people's cast-offs. Look out for old linen tablecloths, vintage curtains, duvet covers and old-fashioned headscarves with splashy flowers, quaint poodles or neat geometric patterns. The tablecloth can become a dress, the curtains can be made into bags with headscarf linings, and the duvet cover can be transformed into a cartoon skirt. It's a lovely way to recycle - instead of those pieces of fabric being wasted, you will have transformed them into covetable clothes and accessories.

While you're in the charity shop, have a good rummage. There are usually tins of buttons just waiting to be discovered, so if there are none on show, ask behind the counter. Really interesting buttons can often be expensive, so it's also worth looking to see whether any of the cardigans or shirts on the hangers have particularly spectacular ones - sometimes it's worth buying a garment just for the buttons. And occasionally you'll stumble across brilliant dressmaking patterns from the 60s and 70s, but check the sizes: we've got bigger and taller, so a retro size 12 would be an 8 or 10 nowadays.

7 Allow yourself plenty of time for your project and enjoy the experience

If you're about to embark on a new technique - pleats, buttonholes, bust darts - then over-estimate the time you think it's going to take. I quite like to have a sewing manual to hand, in case things get tricky, and while The Dorling Kindersley Complete Book of Sewing is a little dull, it is also hugely informative, with clear photographs and full instructions. It pretty much covers all the techniques you need for dressmaking and sewing at home. But my favourite is an old Vogue Sewing book, which cost about £2.50 secondhand, and has step-by-step guidelines, illustrated with lovely retro line drawings. It's worth looking for these on Amazon, where you might well be able to pick up a secondhand copy.

8 Make sure you're sitting comfortably when you're sewing

Take breaks, and stretch. It doesn't matter if things go wrong - just stay calm, undo it and start again. Sometimes it's even better when it goes wrong, because the mistakes send you off on a creative tangent that would never have occurred if all had gone smoothly. Really.

9 Once you've started there's a world of inspiration out there

Craftster.org is an online community for offbeat craft projects that has detailed tutorials on everything from making a prom dress from scratch to transforming a pillow case into a ra-ra skirt. Threadbanger.com, a network for people who make their own fashion, says: "Threadbangers cheerfully declare an end to fashion dictated from on high. Live and die DIY, that's the Threadbangers motto". You can "join the handcraft revolution" at knitonthenet.com, or Burdastyle.com provides free downloadable patterns, which are extremely user-friendly, with tips on how to get the best results. And sites such as bootyvintage.etsy.com, borntoolatevintage.com and misshelene.com specialise in selling lovely vintage sewing patterns. Sewmamasew.com offers free patterns and sewing tips, plus a huge selection of fabric to purchase. When it comes to buying materials, ebay is crammed with yarn, knitting and sewing patterns. Reprodepot.com offers vintage reproduction and retro fabric, plus hard-to-find Japanese import fabrics. They also stock unusual buttons, iron on patches and pretty ribbon and sewing patterns.

10 If crafting takes over your life to the point that you consider ditching your job and setting up a stall, Etsy.com is an easy place to start selling your wares

Their mission is "to enable people to make a living making things", and they feature 100,000 sellers from around the world, on a site comprehensively divided into categories including bags and purses, candles, furniture and jewellery and clothing. It's easy to start selling - the site includes step-by-step instructions for setting up your own etsy store, and they take just 3.5% of each sale. Add pictures and descriptions of your handmade items and wait for the buyers to start clicking.